


Haunted Heart

by danke_rose



Series: World of Hox/Pox/Dox [4]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Gen, Missing Friends, The story that should have been told, There I Fixed It, angsty, character is already canonically dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23514022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danke_rose/pseuds/danke_rose
Summary: Kurt's team returns to the Mansion to investigate some mysterious mutant activity that Krakoa picked up.This is a fix-it/rewrite of the Giant Sized X-Men featuring Nightcrawler that released in 2020.
Relationships: Kitty Pryde & Douglas Ramsey, Kitty Pryde & Illyana Rasputin, Kitty Pryde & Kurt Wagner, Lockheed & Kitty Pryde
Series: World of Hox/Pox/Dox [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2162625
Comments: 10
Kudos: 9





	Haunted Heart

**Author's Note:**

> That issue really fell short for me. A total missed opportunity for some real emotions. All of Kitty's closest friends were there, and yet, she was never even mentioned. Lady Mastermind? Really? Anyway, I rewrote it and made it what I wish it had been.
> 
> Some dialogue borrowed from the actual comic.

Kurt stepped through the Krakoan portal and scanned the overgrown mansion. Vines and branches now lived in the spaces that had been their home for years. Aside from the plants that were reclaiming the space, it now stood abandoned and empty. The life he'd once felt there, the excitement and energy, the hopes and dreams, all gone. Transferred now to an island in the Pacific, where everything was possible. Almost everything.

Illyana, Lockheed, Doug, and Trevor stepped through beside him, all of them searching the shadows for whatever mutant might be hiding there. Krakoa had been reporting mutant activity near the gate for a while and Kurt had finally dragged a team together to investigate. Being at the mansion again was surreal, and he felt something like homesickness. He had little patience for Trevor's sarcastic comments.

“This is the kind of place that makes me wanna haul ass back to Krakoa,” Trevor said.

“Show some respect, Trevor. This was our home,” Illyana said.

“Yes it was,” he said, grateful to Illyana for shutting down the comments. Memories flooded his mind, fighting to distract him from the task at hand. He didn't want to think about those memories, the people, the events, the occasions he'd celebrated within these walls. Part of him wanted to explore the place, go back to the spaces he'd lived and worked and played. He wondered what his old room looked like now.

“I'm picking up recent activity,” Trevor said, serious now after his reprimand.

A noise nearby stopped them in their tracks and sent Lockheed into a rage. He flew from Kurt's shoulder, fire spewing from his mouth. Since Kitty—Kate's death, he'd been angry and cranky and restless. Kurt had tried to reassure him that Kate would come back, that the professor would see to it. But he was becoming increasingly discouraged. Each time they tried, the egg was not viable. The Five were wearing themselves out trying to resurrect her and no one knew why it wouldn't work. It was becoming harder to hold onto the hope that she might return.

They should have investigated the issue with the gates. They should have tried to find out why Kitty couldn't use them, because he felt now it must be the same reason they couldn't bring her back. Everything was possible on Krakoa, except what was not.

Kurt grabbed Lockheed at last, snapping his mouth shut before he burned the mansion to the ground. “Stop it, Lockheed,” he scolded. Then his eyes alighted on the shadowy form of someone he'd known briefly, many years ago.

“ _Thunderbird_? It can't be, he hasn't been—”

Just as quickly as he appeared, he was gone, when the others crashed through the overgrowth.

“Kurt, what was it?” Illyana looked around and took Lockheed when he flew into her arms.

Illyana, Lockheed, and Doug had been three of Kitty's closest friends, too. She'd lost two of them and he recalled long-ago days when their deaths would hit her, and she would cry in his arms until she was exhausted. Now they were back, and she was the one who was gone.

“I could have sworn there was someone here,” Kurt said. He didn't say who. They'd think he was crazy. And some of them probably didn't know who Thunderbird was. Would Illyana have known him? He didn't think so.

“Maybe it was the smoke,” Doug suggested.

“Possibly,” Kurt agreed. “Let's keep moving. Are you reading anything at all, Trevor?”

“No, not a thing.”

They returned to the path left by the vegetation, and as they reached it, Kurt heard another sound behind him. Rustling, like someone walking. He turned, and saw the outline of a person, not Thunderbird this time. Someone else. Someone he'd recognize almost anywhere. Waves of hair, poufy sleeves. Adrenaline shot through his veins.

He teleported without a word to his team. Then again, again, again, trying desperately to reach her, to catch her. Could it be? Was it her? There was nothing there. He stopped, frustrated and confused. Pain at her loss welled up in spite of his desire to remain hopeful.

Illyana shoved her way through the branches again. “Kurt, what are you doing?”

“It was Kitty,” he said, watching her face blanch. “I'm sure it was her, I saw—”

“No, Kurt, she's not—” Illyana began.

“Puffy blue sleeves and long brown hair?” Trevor interrupted.

Kurt turned, tensing with hope that would not be quelled. “Yes! You saw her?”

“Yeah.” He pointed. “She's right there.”

Kurt whirled. She was there, looking off to the distance, not seeing them.

“Kitty?” he said, and she bolted, all of them tailing after her. Why was she running away? Didn't she know them?

They called to her, tearing through the tight weave of vines and branches that Kitty moved through with the ease of a ghost. Lockheed burned a path from Illyana's shoulder, but he didn't fly after her.

“It has to be her,” Doug said.

“No one can move through this mess as easily as Shadowcat,” Trevor agreed.

Adrenaline and shock fueled him as Kurt ignored the scratching branches, following Kitty farther into the mansion's shadowy depths. She jumped into a hole filled with machine parts and bits of tech and computer systems no longer being used. Of course she would go there, to the heart of the mansion's computer systems.

“Kitty!” he cried, but she didn't even turn around. What was wrong with her?

Doug and Illyana looked as stricken as Kurt felt, and only Lockheed seemed calm. Odd that the dragon wasn't going after her. He would have caught up to her by now, easily. Did he feel betrayed? Was he hurt that she hadn't opened her arms to him, welcoming him back to her side?

Kitty ran down a tunnel, heading deeper under the mansion. Terror seized him, that she would disappear into the earth before he could catch her and talk to her. If only he could make her stop, make her hear them, he could reach her. He knew he could.

“I'm stopping this,” Kurt said. If Kitty wanted to keep going, teleporting in front of her wouldn't stop her. He knew it, but he tried anyway. He had to.

“Kitty!” he said, reaching for her arms. She didn't phase through him. His hands gripped her wrists, solid and real, but she looked through him, as if she didn't see him at all. “Kitty?” he repeated, loosening his grip when he decided she wasn't going to keep running. He leaned down slightly, trying to align his face with the direction of her gaze. Her eyes were as unfocused as his own often seemed to be. Was this how people felt when they looked at him?

She spoke, but not words in any language he could understand. “Doug, did you understand that?”

“Yeah, some kind of standard binary,” he said, reaching for one of the walls. “These seem like they're pulsing,” he muttered to himself.

Kurt wasn't listening, he was focused completely on Kitty, on the way her eyes were glassed over, the strange words, or non-words, she'd spoken. She was standing still now, and he took her hands in his, willing her to look at him, to recognize him. “Kitty,” he whispered, taking a chance and touching her face with one hand. “Please, it's me, Kurt. You're safe here now.”

Her mouth emitted more of the strange sounds, and he let his forehead drop to hers in frustration and pain.

“Illyana, Lockheed, Doug, let's all try—”

His suggestion was cut off as Doug fell through the wall of the tunnel.

“Doug!” he cried, lunging for him, but he was too late. Doug passed through the wall and was gone.

Trevor remarked on the oddness of it all, then suggested they probably ought to go after him.

In the confusion, Kitty turned and ran, and Kurt followed without thinking. He had to get through to her, he had to reach her. Somehow the Five had succeeded, but it had gone wrong, she'd wound up here, looking more like her Excalibur self than her Kate Pryde, Sea Captain self. His heart felt like it might beat out of his chest as he ran after her, Illyana close at his heels, calling her name as often as he was.

Suddenly the tunnel opened up on an empty space, glowing from an indiscernible source. Kitty stood in the center, motionless. Kurt fought the urge to run to her again, to wrap his arms around her. Training took over and made him cautious. Perhaps, in spite of how much he wanted this to be her, perhaps it wasn't.

“This feels like a trap, doesn't it?” he said.

Illyana agreed. “Trevor stay here and—”

“I know. Keep an eye out. Hilarious.”

Kurt tuned him out while he rambled on about un-funny eye jokes. “Illyana? I'm going closer.”

Slowly and cautiously, he moved toward her, giving Kitty plenty of time to see him coming. She made no move to run, either away or to him. It hurt that she didn't seem to recognize him at all. They'd been so close once. She'd been his best friend. How time changes things.

“Kitty? Time to tell me what's going on.” He moved closer, trying to place himself in her line of vision, but she wasn't looking at him, or at anything.

“I'm trapped,” she said, “Sleepwalking.”

“I'll help you. Let me help,” he said. He sounded desperate but he didn't care. Let her hear it, let her hear how much he missed her. How much he needed her to come back to them. To him.

She continued, as if she hadn't heard him. “Dreaming. Always moving. Hunting. Traveling.”

It didn't make sense. Was she dreaming about the Cross-Time Caper? Was she lost in the memory of those bizarre days, living on a train and jaunting from world to world until she was lost?

“Kätzchen, you're here, you're on Earth. This is the old mansion, and it's me, Kurt. Your friend. Look at me. See me. _Please_.” He held out his hands, close to hers, but not touching, praying for recognition that would not come. His chest ached.

He became aware of Illyana moving closer, her sword slowly lowering as she stared at Kitty. He felt Illyana's hand on his shoulder.

“Kitty, please,” he begged, his throat growing tight with the need to hear her say his name. “Please.”

“Kurt, I don't think—” Illyana began.

Kitty screamed, clutching her head, as bright light spilled out of her pores. Kurt was shocked and Illyana yanked him back as Kitty's body fell apart in front of them, becoming tiny pieces, scuttling across the floor like bugs. Aliens. A group of them. Sidri.

Trevor ran up. “What are they?” he said, putting his back to his teammates as they faced the aliens that now surrounded them.

“Sidri,” Kurt repeated, his voice toneless and dry. “Bounty hunters. They...” Disappointment clogged his throat, grief and pain choked his heart and turned to fear as he realized they were surrounded.

He recalled his last encounter with the Sidri, long ago during Excalibur. Kitty hadn't been there. Two of these aliens had nearly killed him. Now they were surrounded by hundreds, perhaps thousands of them.

The Sidri swarmed and the three of them attacked with whatever they had. Illyana's Soul Sword cut through the mob of aliens as Kurt and Trevor leaped and kicked.

Illyana pointed out the obvious. “I hate to pull rank here, Kurt, but we have to find Doug and get out of here.” She waited. “Kurt?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “You go find Doug, but hurry. I don't know how long we can keep them at bay.”

Her face was set, but he knew she was disappointed, too. “I'll hurry,” she said, as she disappeared through her teleport disk.

Kurt turned his attention back to the swarming aliens. He and Trevor wouldn't last long. He hoped Illyana could find Doug quickly. He didn't want to leave both of them behind.

As abruptly as the attack had begun, it ceased.

“What's going on?” Trevor said, turning suspiciously in a circle.

“They've stopped.”

“I think they're waiting.”

Kurt tried not to relax. The Sidri could not be trusted. And they had already fooled them once.

“Look who I found,” Illyana said as she reappeared, and for the briefest of seconds, he thought it would be Kitty.

It was Doug, of course, and he knew that. He knew.

“Good,” Kurt said, his words clipped. “We need to get out of here.”

“That's what they want,” Doug said, “But first, we need to take care of an issue. An infestation in their nest.”

He turned to a huge, smooth dome behind them. Kurt had hardly noticed it while they were fighting. Now that he studied it, it looked a lot like one of the Five's eggs. Hope fluttered in his heart again, and it angered him. She was gone and the sooner he accepted it, the sooner he could move on, to a life without her, permanently this time.

The egg opened.

It wasn't Kitty.

He pushed the upwelling of disappointment deeper, annoyed that he could not control the hope in his heart that somehow she might come back. He glanced at his teammates. Doug and Illyana and Lockheed had loved her, too. They must all be reeling now, but he felt weak, as if he were the only one of them being broken by it now.

Kurt reached into the egg and took the hand of a very confused Lady Mastermind. She didn't remember anything after she came to the mansion to use the gateway. Before Kurt could explain to her what had happened, a Sidri formed beside them in the generic shape of a human. It no longer appeared as Kitty.

“Yeah, we're leaving now,” Doug said to it. “Thanks for being cool about things.”

Kurt was more than ready to go. He wanted to get back to Krakoa, ask about the Five's progress. He wanted to interrogate the professor and demand an explanation for why Kitty could never use the gates and why they could not resurrect her. He wouldn't do those things, of course. He would go to his dome and drink some of the German beer he kept there, and he would mourn her. Because she wasn't coming back.

As they walked toward the Krakoan gate, Doug explained the deal he'd made with the aliens. It allowed them to continue living at the mansion as long as they kept the gate area free. Doug speculated that the deal might not work out in the long run, but for the moment, it was all he could do. Kurt nodded automatically. It didn't seem important at the moment.

His shoulders drooped as they walked out of the mansion, trying to offer a positive spin. “We've added one more to our ranks,” he said, but he didn't feel positive. He felt weary.

Before they passed through the gate back to Krakoa, he looked over his shoulder one more time, searching the branches and vines for a familiar figure who wasn't there. With a heavy heart, he turned and walked through the gate.


End file.
